Jack Seltzer's classroom often is an outdoor lab, where Navajo teens cultivate the old ways while connecting with the new.
He teaches science through sheep herding, native plants, gardens and orchards that blaze green against the stark, dusty basin of Monument Valley. He's even helping revive the dying art of saddle cinches.
"The Navajo people are pretty special. They have their own language and their own cultural base," Seltzer said. "I'm trying to make sure some of that doesn't disappear."
For his efforts, the 55-year-old Monument Valley High School teacher this month received the National Education Association's Leo Reano Memorial Award, named after a teacher, artist and interpreter dedicated to securing educational opportunities for American Indians and Alaska natives. The award was bestowed at the NEA's Human and Civil Rights Awards Dinner in Orlando, Fla.
"He has this very humble demeanor and yet he conveys incredible strength," said Kimilee Campbell, president of the Utah Education Association, which nominated Seltzer for the award. "He really tries to honor his students and their culture, and he goes about the business of educating these students with incredible dedication. We were very proud of him."
Monument Valley High is in San Juan County, on the Navajo Indian Reservation near the Utah-Arizona border.
Seltzer has spent some 25 years in the area, first educating adults as an extension agent for Utah State University and, shortly afterward, at a principal's invitation, teaching teens. He is one of Monument Valley's original staff, opening the school in 1983. He teaches about 150 students a year.
His is a lengthy career for an area that's not usually a big draw for job-hunting teachers. But he is at home there. He even lives on the school campus.
"I'm not a city person," said Seltzer, who grew up on a farm and ranch. "I like open space . . . but I also moved here because of the challenge with the clientele. I work at speaking Navajo — I'm not totally fluent in it . . . and the people are very forgiving. I'm still learning from them, and they're learning from me, and that makes it a very equitable situation for me."
He and his students tend to a campus garden and 40-tree orchard, where they implement drip irrigation, harvest the produce and sell it to elders at low cost.
The gardens are a community draw. Locals often vow to grow their corn taller than that in the school's garden, which one woman calls "a miracle garden in the desert that Jack can grow," said his wife, Patricia Seltzer, Monument Valley High principal.
Seltzer's ethnobotany project includes some 120 plants used in various aspects of Navajo culture, including natural dyes. Students research the plants, learn their traditional uses and scientific properties.
His churro sheep project reintroduced animals the Navajo once raised and whose wool is used for weaving and ceremonies. Students are learning they can sell the wool for far more money by preparing it or even dyeing it first.
A hay project provides for the community — and the school's Future Farmers of America program.
Elders teach the dying art of weaving Navajo saddle cinches, big during military cavalry years, but disappearing "with all the synthetic stuff on the market," Seltzer says. He's working to develop a market for them, too.
"Everything he does he does because it's the right thing to do," said Christine Watkins, who was Southeastern UniServ executive director when Seltzer was nominated for the award. "He's been a workhorse . . . very well liked and admired."
Seltzer's work is innovative — and, he indicates, necessary. He says his students need hands-on learning, not lecturing. Lessons on science, chemistry and physics are more relevant when using examples from both Navajo and Anglo cultures.
"He'll give the kids a million different chances to show him they know what it is they're learning — more so than any other teacher I've seen," Patricia Seltzer said. "But they know they're not going to get off easy."
Described as humble and modest, Jack Seltzer is said to be not only accepted but respected in the community. He gave part of his award acceptance speech in Navajo, said Ryan Anderson, past president of the Southeastern UniServ who teaches at Grand County High.
"Jack actually walks the way of a teacher," Anderson said. "He creates new paths by following and learning from traditional ways, which when you live rurally, as we both do, if you allow, it can become a different way of living. And I think Jack exemplifies that."
Seltzer has received other awards in the past few years, including a $10,000 Public Education Job Enhancement Excellence and Advancement Award, Micron Science Teacher of the Year, San Juan School District Teacher of the Year, the track coach award from the Utah High School Activities Association, and first runner-up to the 2005 Utah Teacher of the Year.
But for him, the real perks are the students, who keep him young, and the community with which he connects.
"I find the Navajo people extremely interesting, and I find them to be very generous in the way they treat me. And they have a very high expectation of what they want out of me, which I find very comforting," Seltzer said.
"Because it's not just, 'We want you to do this . . . ' They'll say, 'Why don't you grow these kinds of things?' and I'll start to ask questions and (learn) these are traditional plants used for these things. That's the relationship I'm after."
E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com